Resolutions!

DO YOU LIKE PRINCESS MARGARET (the late Princess Margaret) with her drink and fag? I was sure every other photo I'd find would have her with drink in one hand, cig in the other: that's how I remember her. Seems in actuality she was more discreet than that - as you can see the rum-&-Coke's been quickly stashed behind her and the fag put down in the bottom of the frame but not quite out of shot... Rumour even had it that Princess Margo's drunken dropped Dunhill that sparked the great Windsor Castle fire of 1992 though Buckingham Palace still vigorously denies this ...

Actually I am writing this on Sunday night the 30th of December. And I am all forlorn and lost-feeling and depressed. Hmmm. Also I've had the heating on and working so very successfully I am now sweltering...

Well, whatever: on to Resolutions.

I don't actually make New Year's resolutions these days, having always believed that just doing things, whatever the time of year is by far the best course of action. Also, January 1st is but an arbitrary date to me. I've always felt my personal New Year began around September - in line with the academic year.

Having said all that, here are some things I'd like to accomplish in 2008:

~ Finish Memoirs
~ Write Baying Gwendolina novel
~ Get 1000 hits a day on blog (as if - I think it would be easier to sell five million books and at least I'd get paid handsomely for that)
~ Learn to cook just like Chinese takeaway (and save £££s)
~ Move out of present craphole where I live (by choice; not eviction)
~ Cease all nonprescribed drugtaking and immoderate drinking
~ Give up smoking

If I manage just one of these I'll call it an achievement; all 7 and it's a genuine miracle!

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008 EVERYONE!
MAY IT BE FAR BETTER THAN YUKKY OLD 2007!!

Aargh! I am sposed to finish here. And yet the emptiness is killing me. So here's a poem I really like. (From Shakespeare.)

Fear no more the heat of the sun
nor the furious winter's rages;
thou thy wordly task hast done,
home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the frown of the great
thou art past the tyrant's stroke.
Care no more to clothe and eat;
to thee the reed is as the oak.
The sceptre, learning, physick must,
as chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Fear no more the lightning flash,
nor th' all-dreaded thunder-stone;
fear not slander, censure rash;
thou has finished joy and moan.
All lovers young, all lovers must
consign to thee and come to dust.

No exorciser harm thee
nor no witchcraft charm thee!
Ghost unlaid forbear thee;
nothing ill come near thee!
Quiet consumation have
and renownèd be thy grave.

Cymbeline 4:2:259-282


The LORD is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
he makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside the still waters.
He resores my soul;
he leads me in the paths of righteousness
for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me in the prescence of my enemies;
you annoint my head with oil;
my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life;
and I will dwell in the house of God
for ever.

Psalm 23


R: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this:
my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
J: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
which mannerly devotion shows in this;
for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
R: Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
J: Aye, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
R: O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do!
They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
J: Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
R: Then move not while my prayer's effect I take. - (they kiss; woo!)

from Romeo and Juliet 1:5:93-106...

After 3am

I KNOW WHAT my real Resolution should be: to have some respect for myself. Because some couple of years ago, feeling suicidal and yet unwilling, when it came to it, to actually perform the act. Though even the train drivers (well, one driver in particular somehow saw into my eyes at 90+ mph. I wasn't being stupid, either. Wasn't acting out or hanging off the edge of the platform.) He just saw my eyes and frantically waved his arms across each other as if to say "DON'T!"

Something else along those lines happened another time.

And I lost all respect formyself. Let everything go. RAtcheted up my beloved bank account, which allowed me a Visa debit card with holographic flying wings, right far past the max until the entire account was suspended on me. I had kept that card through thick and think and the pits of homelessness and addiction. It represented my future and a nominal place as a respectable member of society. I was the ONLY junkie I knew who'd managed to hold on to such a relic of past life. Most had never had Visa cards. Because, being fulltime junkies since 18 or even 16, they'd never had jobs or normal lives...

I used to cradle this Visa card in my hand, as I slouched on a damp mattress all alone by flickering candle light in a raindripping cavern of an abandoned industrial building. I would tilt the card and watch the birdie flying free.

While I lived out this subterranean life...

And every day, when I woke I felt like I was lying face-down on the pavement, banging my head on the ground. "This does not work. I cannot do this any more."

And so I hit rock bottom every day. And yet lived on.

FOR MY SINS.

***

Video of the Day:
Queens' Speeches Go International -
This one is the:
Dutch Queen's Speech!!

***

I was going to post lots more blarble but I've got Thai chicken babycorn egg fly lice wafting mysterious oriental aromas out of a plastic bag so I must go back and devour it!!

***

Meanwhile, New Year has kicked off in Australia, New Zealand and many South Sea Islands already. It's nine minutes to 5pm as I write... Japan to get it very soon... America and Canada, you are still late morning in New York and the eastern seaboard; not even 9am in Vancouver and LA...

I will not be able to get to everybody's pages in time to say this individually, so I'll say it again here:-

HAVE A MARVELLOUS 2008 EVERYBODY!!!

STOP PRESS ~ 19/01/10 ~ someone put the most disgusting picture on my hyperlink here. If you click on this you either get needle and candle or a starfish. (Clue: not sea variety...)

Gledwood Has Images

YES! To celebrate the amazing future of 2008 I am adding lots of possibly irrelevant images to my daily blog. Do you like this hammy? He looks just like my "8 miles a night" ratwheelrunner Pandable, who lived till three-and-a-half and is hopefully still running the great rat's wheel in the sky as we speak.

Yeah!!

ps have a scroll down for "witty" visual comments on the week's "themes" ...

Sunday Slumber

IT'S AROUND THREE THIRTY Sunday afternoon. I am listening to Roald Dahl's The Witches on the radio via the wonders of internet technology. In a minute I am due to go up Mother Hubbs's house. I still look scruffy because my coat's a bit dirty but all my clothes are fresh and clean thanks to my efforts with a bucket, hot water and washing up liquid to get them clean and a cooker top, wok (as giant paper weight thing) and kitchen cupboard as drying board. One certain item made the water run nearly black, but I got it sunlight-fresh again...

Typical me describing Princess Diana's old home yesterday in all it's odd taste I forgot to say how I personally thought the Palace (who aparently have a giant central furniture and rugs store) had deliberately given Diana mismatched stuff. I honestly can't see how she'd have chosen such odd and clashing styles herself.

By the way, on clicking the Wedgwood link I found my favourite design for plates/cups/tureens etc. It is called Florentine Turquoise. Plates are "only" £50/$100 each, so ... hmmm, yeah... a full "service" might set "one" back £2000...

The poem was a joke! It comes from Shakespeare's Passionate Pilgrim... I just wanted to see if anyone recognized it!!

I slept for hours and hours last night and had so many odd dreams.... you will be relieved I am sure to hear that I can barely remember one of them, so no dream-posting today!

Righto I had better go it is getting late and I really don't feel well. I don't know why...

New Year's Eve tomorrow. Wahey!!

***

Video:
Chinese TV Commercial: Automatic Dr

Cheese and Onion Rolls

LOVELY CHEESE AND ONION ROLLS! The cheese and onion being baked upon t' top. These I am devouring with intellectual parsley French cheese and garlic "le roulé". It's v nice but the robos prefer it without the garlicky cream cheese. Neither they nor Pingpong the Chinese hammy can abide garlick. They don't like ginger biscuits either.

My tiny Tubbies TM are so cute I nearly cried. Intruding upon their enclosed tartanness, I witnessed their wheel a-spinning wildly. On closer look I saw all three tubbies a-rambling at once. One hangs on and a flash of white belly flares around and round and round until the poor robo manages to unhook herself...

Bad news from Yorkshire: a 13 month old baby boy named Archie Lee was savaged to death by a rottweiler dog in Wakefield yesterday. The infant was being looked after by his 16 year-old aunt, who went upstairs just for one minute. Meanwhile a seven year-old girl, also in the house, took the babe outside to pet said doggie. The 14-stone rottweiler sprang and grabbed the child in its powerful jaws and literally tore him apart. The 16 year-old auntie ran down and bravelly tried to grab the child back but to no avail. Realizing she had failed she called the emergency services. Armed police arrived within six minutes and shot the dog dead. Sadly the little boy died in hospital later that night.

In the library today I found a book called The Way We Were by Paul Burrel, Princess Diana's flunky butler (her "rock"). Among the blah-blah-blahs in the centre pages are pictures of the late Diana's home at Kensington Palace. Man! I was shocked! This woman, an international "icon" of style... had absolutely no style at all when it came to personal interior decor. Honestly it looks like Jack and Vera Duckworth's lottery winning mansion ... Take a room-by-room tour:~

Dressing Room: Walls crabmeat pink, curtains pea green with spaghetti white strips. Pea green carpet with crabmeat splotches.

Sitting Room: Cheap white rug with pink-and-blue pastel squares. Nasty blue-red-and-butter wallpaper colours tightly meshed together giving overall appearance of a nasty 1970s kipper tie. Middleclass dollshouse windows. Champagne chaise. Cobalt blue curtains. Magnolia shelves along one wall against Barbara Cartland shocking pink paintwork.

Dining Room Deep red walls. White crisscross Hamptons Holiday Home style rug. Round table with Daz-white plain cloth. Totally mismatched bamboo garden dining chairs.

Drawing Room Yellow walls. Same middle class windows as "sitting" room now with red ruffy curtains atop and around. Pea green satin sofas with red and yellow cushions. Other chairs - crabmeat pink and champagne. Arabesque rug in white with pink-blue-green flowers-&-stems stylee swirls. Totally mismatched dark mahogany tables and drawers plonked here and there atop it. And most clashing of all a floor to ceiling silk mediaeval style pastoral tapestry.

Staircase: Yellow walls. White detailing "Wedgwood" style. Nasty post-Victorian splashy paintings spaced irregularly up the stairs...

Nasty business!

How does everyone like my "rude" poem? 1st one I have copied up for ages. Hasn't the verse matured? And the style improved? Since the last poesies I posted?

Scarce had the sun dried up the dewy morn,
and scarce the herd gone to the hedge for shade,
when Cytherea, all in love forlorn,
a longing tarriance for Adonis made
under an osier growing by a brook,
a brook where Adon used to cool his spleen.
Hot was the day; she hotter that did look
for his approach that often there had been.
Anon he comes, and throws his mantle by,
and stood stark naked on the brook's green brim.
The sun looked on the world with glorious eye,
yet not so wistly as this queen on him.
He, spying her, bounced in whereas he stood;
"O Jove!" quoth she. "Why was I not a flood?"


***

(Saturday)
Video:
HM the Queen's first televised Message to the Nation 1957

***

See some wonderfully atmospheric seaside photos from the North Yorks town of Whitby ...

RIP Benazir; Predictions for Next Year...

SO POOR BENAZIR BHUTTO, former 1980s Prime Minister of Pakistan (and international best drest leader. Far funkier choice of outfits than Margaret Thatcher who was her contemporary)... was assassinated yesterday. Though the Pakistani government claim she wasn't shot at all, but fell and fatally clonked her head as bullets flew all around, her assailant subsequently blew himself up killing twenty bystanders. Whatever the precise cause, the lady is dead. I was wondering why on earth she went for Prime Minister when she could have been President, but have just discovered that the consitution of Pakistan supposedly places President as Queen-like figurehead with the PM holding the true reins of power. Some dictator-style Presidents, like Musharraf, have over the years, altered the constitution to their own ends to allow themselves to be President and All Powerful.

Valium Marilyn took me out for Chinese food tonight. Chicken-capsicums-blackbean-sauce-mound-of-lice for me. Very nice. Pad Thai for her. I could have done with a side-order of heroin, I must say, but hey. Lovely food, but neither of us could finish it and I ended up taking half mine home in a doggie bag!

Now Xmas is over I feel like the world. Drab and down. And overinclined to doze... I hope everyone else is OK. Most of you seem still to be off away on holidays...

Anyway: New Year's next week; here are my World Predictions for 2008:-

~ US dollar to decline further, maybe to $2.50 to the £ sterling, but to bottom out. Euro gains increasing favour as world reserve currency

~ Hilary Clinton to be US President (nobody's even heard of the Republican contenders over here)

~ As of February it's Chinese Year of the Rat, my own sign and supposedly my year. I shall get a publishing deal for my memoirs and the Baying Gwendolina novel (had to get "baying" somehow into 2008 predictions haha!!)

~ Violence and disorder spread across Britain's streets

~ Worldwide oil and fuel crisis deepens

~ Spherical, my tubbiest robo, at last gets genuinely pregnant

~ Osama Bin Laden captured - dead.

Video of the Day
Obituary of Ronnie Barker, my favourite comedian of all ...

(Thursday) Day After Boxing Day 2007

IT SAYS FRIDAY AS I TAPPED THIS IN AFTER MIDNIGHT...

THOSE PONGEROVSKIS ARE DOZING IN THEIR TEABOX IN DISGRACE. Whenever I dare venture a hand inside, Sergeant Itchy wakes like a light flicking on and glares reprimandingly at me. "Whatever you're thinking, don't bother. We're on to you." She gets more like Spherical every day.

Last time I poked my head in the tartan I kept whispering "hello you little Porkshires. Hello hello!" in the same tones that might have a puppydog scampering this way and that yapping (and maybe even "baying"~haha!). Then out come the three pink noses followed directly by their beady-eyed mini Porkshire terriers' faces. Then they're scampering about this a-way and that, all excited. And Bashful's following my fingers really closely, guaging which moment to seize to bite!

***

As you can see, not a lot doin' today. Actually when I last did look there was Robo-jamboree going on. One leaping out of the "jagoda" Jaffacakes box, another squashed down the magic-wand tube and violently gnawing at the Parmesan Toilet's door. Then out of the toilet Itchy springs all guiltily (again). I dunno what has got into them.

***

I did hear a very inspiring radio interview-cum-feature by Alvin Hall who is an American moneyman person who does TV and radio features on business and finance over here (dunno if he is well-known in America at all!) anyway this was on the subject of the American rapper Jay Zee or Jay Z* if you want to be cool (but Z says zed to me!)

Funny: when I was at school the only thing I wanted to be was very rich and successful yet now I'm poor and unsuccessful. But JZ fought his way up from dealing drugs on the drug-ridden streets to rapperstardom to massive success with clothing lines and many many hiphop-oriented endorsement deals in the US. So much so that he was worth $350 million last year which isn't bad.

Now I have to "fight" my way up to the top. But perhaps not much "fighting" is to be done at all: the top is my natural place. Scum, just like cream always floats right up there soon enough!

***

Nothing else to say: I spent most of the day asleep!

***

*Jay Z really does have his head screwed on: I found this link "Jay Z disses the dollar... appears flourishing euros in his latest video"... smart guy!!

Parmesan Toilet

THOSE SLATTERNLY ROBOHAMSTERS! I can't believe what they have got up to now. Remember my boast of how well-organized they were, even having their own Parmesan-tube public latrine for "hygeine"?

Well I was wondering why, when I stuck my head in the tartan earlier tonight and cooed "come out you tiny tubbies!" they seemed to appear from nowhere and go scampering clockwise in Grand National fashion, all guilty-like and agitated...

Now I know where they appeared from: the Parmesan Lavatory! No wonder Itchy, who looked more bashed-up, touselled and Porkshire Terrorizer-like than usual, ponged more poignantly of peepee than ever before.

They had set up home in the public toilet and were squashed in grooming one another among the urine-soaked woodchips! Well they must have been very cosy in that tiny tubby tub-tub. Barely any room to move past each other - surely a test of patience in most circumstances. They do get on admirably well. And as burrow-dwellers don't seem at all offended when, out of their nest one of their housemates rushes up to them, clambers all over their back or even pushes them backwards to collapse legs-akimbo and just walks all over them like an especially tubby bit of carpet!

The Parmesan Tube is being sternly washed out with extra-strong detergent. And now the teabox (three quarters full of hamster-gathered seeds already) is forming interim secondary accommodation...

And how was your evening..??

Right I didn't have much chance to answer messages until now as I was sneakily using the computer at someone else's and didn't want my own URL flagged up too much... you know I like to keep some dignified distance from the baying herds ... I do hope you all had a cheery time though and I shall be in touch with as many people as possible in the next day or two... ta-raa!!

***

And from my brief internet rambles:

This (real) family Xmas looks just like Christmas Day from the movies...

***

FINALLY I've dredged up a full and nonparodying version of the Queen's Christmas Message so clickonit or scroll above if you missed this year's or want to see it again ...

Boxin' Day Early Morn

WE HAD GORGEOUS ROAST LAMB with perfect potato mash, perfect industrial roast potatoes, cauliflour cheese and some seasonable vegetables and it was probably the best Xmas dinner I ever had. Two Two Ronnies were on literally all day 24-7 on the ITV3 digital channel which made me feel far more "festive" than all the tinesl and fairylights in the world could do! Ronnie Barker is my alltime favourite comedian - and not lauded enough in my opinion, considering how the BBC will go for almost any chance to dredge their archives and fill yet more time with repeats.

Mother Hubbs and her partner Dodger have been charming. You couldn't ask for better friends. I've basically been staying in their house since showing up bedraggled at the door c 5pm Xmas eve till now, which is about 8am Boxing Day morning!

Now I had better go as I was very kindly allowed on their housemate's computer but I'm kind of on semi-illicitly at the present instant...

I hope everyone else has had a fantastic time!

Peace and love to all
G

xx

PS I watched the end of Finding Nemo yesterday and Nemo's like a fish version of my tiny tubby robbie Baby Itchy he really is haha!!

I shall endeavour to recite back The Mystery of the Baying Porkshire Terrier next time I am on. Baying because I yes ME! I was the accused thief!!


I'm going to endeavour to paste up Her Majesty the Queen's Xmas Message to the Common "Wealth" if I can dredge that one up too...

***

PS THEY'RE ALL AT THE PUB AGAIN it's about 3pm Boxing Day
I was at the shops on Christmas Eve. The world was going mad. Herds of tinselled people clutching tinselly bags full of goodies from the glowing shops. And outside the busiest of these - which was full of folks piling in to get last minute Cards and gifts - was a poor old doggie, a Yorkshire terrier. What first attracted me was that he reminded me of Itchy. Being tiny and gingery in colour. What was NOT like Itchy was that the poor thing was tied to railings, jumping this way and that barking and yapping and wagging his tail and causing all manner of fuss and now and then tipping his head and baying soulfully at the Christmas lights (OK, slight exaggeration. No "baying" but the dog was going nuts.) At one point a man asked me whether the dog was mine which made me worried it had been there for ages or been abandoned even. I checked the tag on his collar and he didn't live too far off ... Anyway five minutes later this same man, a huge black man comes back and starts haranguing me that I'm "going to steal the dog". Whether he was drunk or high I don't know but I was so offended and nothing I could do, e.g. pointing out that this dog was so old his eyes were fogged and almost white and also surely dog thieves just take dogs and don't stand about talking to them for ten minutes first! I was so offended! Anyway thankfully the owner came back and the black man said to me "you missed your chance" "no," I said; "you've missed YOURS" and his composure flickered but he tried to keep up the self-righteous act (maybe he wanted to nick the dog for himself?) and meandered off. So much for Christmas "spirit"~!!

I've had a wonderful time here. It feels really civilized and not like living on Orwell's Animal Farm. I will get in touch again later from the cybercaff.

Have a good one everybody!!

Xmas Afternoon

I'M AT MOTHER HUBBARD'S. EVERYONE ELSE HAS GONE DOWN THE PUB so I get the chance to sneak quickly on this machine.

Dinner's still a-roastin' in the kitchen. Everyone's sober. The Queen's speech isn't on for three quarters of an hour. And the weather outside is really pigstrotterly. All mizzly and drizzly and white-sky'd and soggy.

I'm so glad not to be at "home" with Matran and Laundretta. Something one of them did (or their "friends" involved hammering and hollering at the front door at three AM the other night. Eventually breaking the door open (which isn't that difficult it's been kicked in, broken in, charged in so many times it's used to it now. You just practically have to sneeze on the doorstep and the door springs open in instant surrender...) Then a huge fracas broke out in the hall with a man raging and a strange woman shouting... Next morning the fire alarm was almost broken off the wall. But Laundretta pleaded ignorance.

It's lovely and warm here, even though I don't think the heating's on. I had better go ...

... next time I will tell you about the scandalous dog thief allegation levelled at me last time I went down the shops.

Hope you're having a merry one everyone. If it's not merry I hope it's tolerable. And if it's not even tolerable then I hope you are at least surviving!

Take care!

xxx

Video:
Two Ronnies Gameshow Courtcase Sketch
(it's a cracker!)

Compliments of the Season!

THE ROBBIES ARE PINGING INSIDE THEIR TARTAN hidehout. Pingpong the Chinese hamster is hiding under his luxury pea-green spiral staircase. It was foggy and white upon white with winter trees like an Xmas card earlier. And now it's dark and London is lit up like an Xmas tree...

... I'm off to Mother Hubbs's. Don't know if I'm coming back tonight ...

So have a VERY HAPPY PAGAN-MASS EVERYBODY!

(Or "Saturnalia"! Or Christmas if you prefer ...)

And all being well I should be back long before the New Year!!

Heat Is Back!

I HAVE HEAT! All for the sake of a busted 13A fuse... now refrigeration is back... heat is back (from cooker-power)... TEA is back too. I've bought 250g of McVite's digestives ("70% wholemeal wheat and goodness!") in celebration.

Whooh! To be honest I thought after last night's sounding off nobody would ever want to talk to me again.

Mixed sex hospital wards (especially for the over 50s) in this country nobody wants them. And I really feel sorry for old ladies trapped with old men going "rampant" upon them. Not (usually) literally... but who knows.... How on earth is that condusive to getting better. Yes it probably is a cultural thing, but it's not part of the culture here. Surely (as I said) someone can simply re-divvy up the floorspace M~F~M~F again... what's so difficult about that?

Kids: I don't hate kids at all but if you've seen how badly they let rip (here in London, I'm not trying to speak for anywhere else) they seriously are little devils-in-the-making... Even Americans, people from the very home of guncrime and disorder say our kids are something else which must surely make you think...

Now it's not so to-the-bone chilly I might be able to tempt Itchy out for a heavily supervised ramble. Before this morning I don't blame them all for hiding in teaboxes, nests of cotton ... etc...

Hey! Now I've got heat back I can also wash clothes... which was temporarily pretty impossible (well, unless you were willing to give them 2 days per item to dry)... and then risk it smelling of a summer camping holiday. Eurgh.

I've dredged up some extra-special pagan Xmas things on video. The sacramento "flower crowns" people go on for 20 mins but are fairly entertaining. If you don't like that go for the Two Ronnies "Worm That Turned"... an "Apocalyptal" View of the World ruled by women in leather hot-pants.

Videos:
True Meaning of Xmas
Two Ronnies Worm That Turned I and II

***

PS (11:40pm) Poor Baby Itchy went out for a highly supervised nonjumpy-down ramble tonight. She was awfully subdued and circumspect. I think she's got bored of her enclosed life of toilet tubes, a wheel and an old Parmesan cheese tub as a toilet!!

***

Rudolph the red-nose rain-DOG ... from Lamplight's blog ...

***

Hey I got visitors from all 6 continents again!

My stats are no more voluminous than anyone else's, but my visitors do seem to come from especially far and wide, which I find enormously flattering... as well as mysterious as I don't know who the vast majority of these people are!

***

Look at this amazing front lawn parrotry pecking about the grass... rainbow lorrikeets etc etc...

(from Bimbimbie's, which means "place of the birdies" in mysterious Aboriginal...)

Last Weekend Before Xmas!

SO IT'S THE FINAL WEEKEND before nasty old Yuletide!

Mother Hubbard invited me to her and Dodge's Xmas. They weren't too sure whether Xmas at home was on the cards or whether they were vanishing away was more the thing.

So after a few bad hitches (when at one point, Xmas seemed to've been cancelled altogether) I'm as certain as I can be that I'm going to theirs. I would say "Godwilling" I'm going, but Xmas is a pagan and thus utterly Godless (in the conventional sense at least) festival. The tinsel, snow and lights are pretty, though.

You can see the True meaning of "Christ"-mas on my video today: Stonehenge Solstice Celebration.

No cooker: no heating! Man! It was absolutely perishing last night! Repeatedly I woke up. And repeatedly had to re-cover self with pink-&-green psychedelic blanketting I'd unwittingly thrown off under the weight of dreams... In the end, my head shoved b'neath the covers was the only thing to keep me warm.... And that made me oversleep in... (How typical!)

Did anyone see my "Our Lil Turkey Farm" vid? It was inspired by a feature on the radio where this lady showed the audience round her turkey shed. Wow: the sound effects! Girls laughing crossed with little boy's electric lazer guns crost with mini dogs baying at the moon. (Have you noticed: "baying" is one of my new favourite words!?!?) She herself warned us: don't ever get just a few turkies. They will get under your skin and you won't want to get rid of them. And judging by the entertaining birds on her own farm I could see (or rather hear) why...

Tony Blair, our former (long, long time ago) highly charismatic Prime Minister has become a Roman Catholic. Big Deal. So now he's worshipping Rome. We all knew he was a "Christian" during his decade of premiership (though his fledgling police state policies strangely weren't...) Well I thought I'd mention this but from hereonin I'm keeping my thoughts on the matter to myself!

Many thanks for all your "name the hellhound" votes. The dog is a household pet, by the way. Please keep voting because I'd not have asked for assistance if I wasn't stuck for a decision on the name. Come on! Vote vote vote!... (above)...

Britain's National Health Serviceis under fire (yet again!) this time over the issue of mixed sex hospital wards... and why on earth do we have them anyhow? Even the interviewer on Radio 4's PM show shillyshally'd round the point and blithered about the "cost" of restoring wards to single-sex (which they always used to be, even in my day, let alone my parents'...) So what about the "cost" when poor old ladies are being harrassed by senile 80 year-old dirty old men? Surely whatever space these hospital "trusts" have (and it's all about "trusts" these days, incomprehensible as they are to us ordinary folk...) Why can't someone just grab hold of the each hospital's floorplan and simply chop it up: M~F~M~F? Simple. Only far too simple for today's penpushers (mouseclickers - sorry!) Yes??

Sticking with the news: so-called "low copy DNA evidence" is centre of the latest media cyclone. It's an ultra-sensitive forensic technique that can get a reading from samples so microscopic they're literally dust.

One of the most fascinating articles I ever read was about common old dust: and that's the thing about it; it gets everywhere. So much so, in fact, that it's quite probable that in your home are particles from the 1883 Krakatoa eruption, the Hiroshima bomb in 1945 and even the ancient tombs of the Pharaohs.

And that's the thing: in analysing "dust" from a Northern Irish bomb, DNA came up and was matched to a teenage boy from Birmingham, which is on the British mainland and hundreds of miles away. This boy had come into contact with the police, because everyone who's arrested is compelled to give sample DNA in this country. But he was no terrorist and had never been near Northern Ireland in his life!

Britain has by far the lartest DNA database in the world. Over four million samples! Add to this the four million PLUS security cameras filming our every move on this island and the car- and mobile phone-tracking technology that is being increasingly frequently implemented and it seems to me our silly government has set up the beginngins of a futuristic nightmare police state. Right here in Britain. The supposed home of democracy!


Videos of the Day:
Leona Lewis: Homeless
Jethro Tull: rare promo for Solstice Bells - 1976
Stonehenge Solstice Celebration

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Dairycow Entertainment Blog

Have a "gander" at these ridiculously multicoloured parrots from Queensland in Bimbimbie's back garden....

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Oh SOMEONE please help me!
Some blithery-hearted liberals are gushing on Radio 4 how if some teenage terrors are terrorizing you (an old age pensioner) from coming out of your home "the underlying issues should be evaluated, and perhaps a mentoring programme instituted"

No!

Cane them until their socks are clots of blood!

Sorry. Slight exaggeration of my views there but HONESTLY these bleeding hearts I cannot stand them.

Someone actualy had the cheek to say it was "ridiculous" that a child should be prosecuted for stealing a sausage roll from a bakers.

Well I'm sorry but when I was age 10 I NEVER stole ANYTHING from the shops because I was TOO TERRIFIED. Yes! ANY LITTLE S**T caught stealing from the shops SHOULD be punished. I'm not sure about giving them criminal records (which will make them grow up to think "what's the point in behaving, I'm branded a criminal already") but something pretty drastic has to be done. The children in this country are as evil as that slavering hellhound I proposed putting growing, savaging, baying and upholstery-ripping into my forthcoming novel. They are children of the devil. It really makes me wonder what planet these do-gooders live on.
Yeah, if I'd come down from Mars I'd definitely agree with the liberals over the conservative "have 'em whipped!" contingent. But if you have ANY experience of what these disgusting, subhuman little piles of **** are actually like I suspect your views would take a rightward turn as mine have done - and they turned right through bitter experience. Not through some stupid ideology I read in a book!

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A phunky bush photo
from
The Eyes of Pod

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DOES EVERYBODY HATE ME because I sound like a Nazi? Well I'm not going to protest too much because that's sad. But let me tell you this (and I'm talking for Britain here, most specifically London)... somehow, somewise (actually, distinctly not wisely at all...) a generation of youngsters is being raised with scant idea not only of good manners and all but more importantly of the morals that underline them.

Stupid Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, took it on himself to give to this entire generation free bus transport. When they are quite capable of walking. And yet because of Livingstone's idiotic move, the respectable paying public are absolutely innundated by nasty, yelling, hollering, baying, unruly schoolchildren who have no respect for their elders (though they expect respect for themselves)... who do all they can to make us feel as uncomfortable out of place and massively encroached upon and as near-assaulted as possible by this noise-in-numbers that comes piling on the bus causing misery and discomfort to all. This isn't just my view - almost everyone who's had the misfortune of boarding a London bus just before 4pm when the brats from school pile on ...

When I was younger my views in most things were pretty liberal. Now, however I'm not alone in feeling opressed and depresed by the negative plunge our society is taking. This is serious bad news. So when I hear these people piling on the radio to defend behaviour that isn't merely bad, it's nasty. I'm scared. Scared for our future, for with nasty selfish brats like that ruling our streets as they undoubtedly do, that future is destined to be anything at all but comfy and bright...

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Aargh! Moralizing moralizing moralizing. Ho-hummmmm....

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The more I think about "her"; the more I want one of those giant Thumbelina dogs.

Oh no! That's a fourth name I came up with there!!

Of course I cannot have dogs where I am now; but when I get a normal home (well, if I ever do) I definitely want a giant black swinesly dog to guard my newspapers and empty tins of beans!!

No Tea Idiot (Идиот )

NO TEA FOR ME! My stove or "hob" as we call it here is kaput. Which means the room is plunging from chilly to colder. (I had to keep one ring on as a roomheater most nights, so I don't know whether that knackered it out or what...) And no more cooking. (Stew's still on the menu as that comes from a Marubishi Japanese pot.) Tea is off as I was using a saucepan to boil water; not a jug. If the fridge is down too there's hope it's just the fuse. Otherwise Evilstein's going to have to sort me a portable cooker!

My new reading book is Идиот by Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский. Sorry! Brief attack of pretentiousness there. I mean Dostoyevsky's The Idiot. I'm quite offended that he took the title before me. Otherwise I'd have used it for my memoirs ... wah-waaaah!!

The memoirs are back on track again. I'm up to my first fulltime job and so the monotony of student - depression blah is broken. Heroin is still years away. I think I'd experimented with just about everything else until I came to that. And had my warning early: most drugs and me do not really agree. That is the thing about heroin. Far from frazzling you out the way most party drugs eventually do, it agrees so very much it becomes a kind of cure-all. Anytime, anyplace, anywhere it makes life more bearable. But I must say, by the time it's doing that for you, you're already an addict.

I won't go on except to say I found a new dealer - from Jamaica. I've only seen him twice and had such trouble with his accent on the phone I don't see how this is going to work. Loads of dealers come from Jamaica but this one's utterly incomprehensible!

Bashful is pinging about "beneath the tartan"... looking just like a cartoon character.

James Bond "Die Another Day" is on telly. V watchable. I specially like the tweetling noises from all that high tech...

Right! Have a cheery weekend everyone!
Video of the Day
Leona Lewis: Footprints in the Sand

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Here's two other videos I couldn't dredge out of the archives. Clickonthem you will get to the vid again once it's gone from this page:

Sonique: I Put A Spell On You
Zucchero: Senza Una Donna

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PS I just looked up "puppies" on that English mastiff website link above and got the story of one called "Jasmine" from 4 weeks to 16 months... wow! At 4 weeks she's a hamster... by 16 months a real moon-bayer!

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An ultra-funky Danish blog

SEE! An army truck parachuted from the sky~!!

Robo Water Crisis!

FOR TWO DAYS NOW my robbies have been lacking a reliable water supply. They used to get water from a bottle taped to the glass quite securely. The tape ran out and I made alternative arrangements, balancing the bottle over cardboard etc... this didn't work the bottle fell down and Bashful and Spherical nearly beat it up, biting and nudging at it to try and force water out. When of course my Giant Hand came to their aid they gazed up at its celestial appearance and scrambled away for sheer terror! Then I set it up again but the tape was too thin and came down. Their only reliable water these past 2 days has come from fresh cucumber! And the sogginess left by a slowly leeching out waterbottle.

I once tried them with water in a pot, like Pingpong the excellently behaved Chinese hamster. These roborovskis are not well behaved at all, however. Nary had it been down half an hour than Bashful tried to go swimming in it - sploshed in! - then pinged out in astonishment as if shocked that so much water could be so wet! If it had been Itchy I'd have wrapped her up in warm towels, but Bashful by name; Bashful by nature. She shot into the teabox to dry off alone in the fluffiness that fills it ...

My last efforts at reattaching the bottle have also failed. Said bottle is on the floor, leaking into the sawdust - where at least they have enough moisture to drink even if it's not ideal. They are after all desert critters and are supposed to be adapted to make to without any supply of moisture save the morning dew... but I heard a sad tale of someone who went away for a week to find their rebellious tubby had taken on himself to rearrange his home, pushing the plastic hammyhouse up against the water bottle, which either blocked it off or caused it to empty out... either way, the poor hammy had already died.

So I've invested in ultra-secure thick tape this time so no more waters-spills, so to speak and hopefully Spherical, Bashful and Itchy will be pinging happily for a long time yet!

***

Xmas is approaching and I think I have got an invitation to do Xmas lunch at Mother Hubbs's. They weren't sure whether they weren't going out to eat this year... but the way it's going I expect they will do Xmas at home after all.

So I shan't be stuck on my own with a turkey sandwich and a gnarled copy of Dickens!

***

Talking of literature I'm still on the trawl for something OK to read.

Three books I do have are:
~ Dickens' Bleak House (as frequently mentioned) ...
~ Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov. My English teacher at school said this was the most boring book he'd ever opened, which personally I take as a contrary sort of recommendation as he recommended Joseph Andrews to me which I found wafflesomely longwinded!
~ Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. This one's quite good and I'm already about two thirds of the way through. My problem was the poor paperback falling in half! And a necessary hunt for the unknown second section ....

I also think I have Dostoyevsky's The Idiot somewhere lurking in a corner... however I really could not say where ...

UNFORTUNATELY I cannot use the public library, cheery idea as it is, as I've still got overwhelming debts to them from nearly a decade ago. I'm reduced instead to trawling the charity shops and ordering notable books from the budget classics ranges from the local "stores"... this part of London is disgustingly badly supplied with bookstores though, I have to say.

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ALL MANNER OF VULGARITY was going on in my house late last night. I reckon I was the only one to get any rest in there. I dread to think precisely what was going on... and so I don't want to know.

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I'm busy summoning up characters for my own novel. Which I wrote out once; but for various reasons I'm unhappy with the haggard old plot. And so I'm going to perform something midway between a common rewrite and a total reworking; just keeping some of the same characters and situations but making a totally new construction out of it...

Last night I got a little paranoid about my powers of characterization. I believe that in fiction the portrayal of character is far more fundamental and important than even a good story. Why? Because in a great story it's the characters we remember as much if not more than what happened... It's the characters that make us want to come back to their wonderful world... I could go blithering on but will leave it for later. I need something to start penning directly the very second my memoirs are over!

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Have you ever seen a white robin? This one was photographed in an East Dorset garden and got in the Times and Sun newspapers this morning....

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Here's the link for the BBC's brand new Oliver Twist adaptation. Typical me to have mist the 1st 2 parts but what the heck. Mr Bumble's getting married tonight!

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IF ANYBODY WANTS TO EMAIL ME YOU CAN GET IN TOUCH AT
HAMMYNUTTER@LYCOS.COM

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I had a peer in the tartan washing bag just now. All three gremlins are rambling on the wheel, two at a time with the spare one pinging around the perimeter. Spherical has packed her pouches so exceedingly she is seriously globular and sending Itchy looping the loop round and round again ...

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SO THE GREAT READING POLL CLOSES...
Charles Dickens wins the day...
The one I really want most is Great Expectations as that is the story I know second best after Oliver Twist...
I'm also hunting out my copy of The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky but cannot presently find it anywhere...

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NOW I'M PUTTING UP A NEW POLL...
My forthcoming fiction shall feature a giant, ill-tempered slavering hellhound of an English Mastiff who spends her time savaging pram wheels, dolls, etc; pulling soft toys apart... growling at houseguests, baying at the light fittings etc etc. She has a total personality change, however, when she gets "raped" down the park by a local rottweiler... leading to a howling, baying, snaggle-toothed litter of puppies!
Anyway, which of these three names do you think fits best?
(In alphabetical order)
Gwendolina
Pansy
Tinkerbelle
???
Vote now (up top)...!!

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Video:
My Lil Turkey Farm

Ginseng 人参 Eyepopper

I WAS GAZING INTO THE CHINESE HERBALIST'S WINDOW and admiring the mysterious Chinese characters that seemed to march across everything - like miniature exploding bundles of firewood - when I came to 人参 and my eyes nearly popped out of my head! 人 is jin; "man" in Japanese (which borrowed half its vocabulary along with the Chinese writing... so 人参 must be ginseng. Google's translator just confirmed this. Wahey!! Seems my studies are actually getting me somewhere. A similar thing happened a few weeks ago outside a small restaurant I saw the hiragana syllables すし and a faint voice at the back of my head whispered "sushi!" I nearly fell over backwards when I realized I had unwittingly managed to read something in Japanese!!

I couldn't stay stood outside that herbalist too long as the sales lady spotted me and her face lit up: "Ah! I see £300 customer. Full of much disease!" she thought. (Well; she might have done.) And she excitedly started beckoning me in. I took a leaflet from the streetside dispenser and hurriedly waved her goodbye.

POOR ITCHY'S RIGHT TO RAMBLE IS UNDER STRICT JUDICIAL REVIEW still and she has gone no further than the mound of toilet tubes at the far end by the teabox since her recapture on Monday evening. The little swine!

WE HAVE HOT WATER BACK! And in renewed effort not to look like a street drinker I fully utilized the facilities yesterday and when I get back home in a sec I'm going to use that tartan washbag to take my clothes down the laundrette. Our nearest one has a spin-dryer so I know they're OK.

I HAD A REALLY INTELLECTUAL BREAKFAST of cheese rolls with black pepper'd Boursin spready-cheese. It was really yummy. Just like being in the midsummer meadows of central France. Except being freezing cold in a leaky garret in leaden-sky'd London ...

WELL NOW OLIVER TWIST'S OVER I'm desperately seeking something else to read. Anna Karenina isn't really cutting the mustard as Dickens whetted my taste for stories of the lower middle class. Tolstoy's characters have titles like Duke and Princess and reside in gleamy horse-clopping fairytale carriage mewsed graceful palaces in St Petersburg with maturely wooded grounds. Not blackened hovels in Bethnal Green! I don't know I did spend £1.50 on Anna Karenina in paperback as well as £10 on a luxury acid-free hardback some years ago which I left at my Dad's house nearly ten years ago ... maybe I should postpone until I get my hardback copy as this paperback's printed in such miniscule type even I find it hard to read so I'd think most people would find it impossible. My other Dickens is Bleak House; but that's so exceedingly longwinded you just end up wanting to throw it out the window. Which is not possible with my wizzy new double-glazing.

AARGH! I really thought I might have something more interesting to say this afternoon but all sense escapes me so I'd better go before I bore you all to rigor mortis. Right then! Tomorrow!!

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Audio Track of the Day:
Cibo Matto

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Amazing View of the Day:
Lake Aititlan in South America at:
http://reasonsipostto.blogspot.com

... and from Spain, some of the most amazing winter wonderland pixx I've ever seen!

An amazingly funky French picture ...

Rural Idle Decomposition

WHAT'S HAPPENED? THE WHOLE WORLD SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN by my blog in the past 24 hours...

Now I'm posting with nothing so much to say!

Well I suppose I should tell you about my stupid "rural idyll". This really must mean I am getting old. That I am starting to have daydreams and fantasies of living in the country... and actually knowing my neighbours' names. Like living in a real-life version of the BBC Home Service/Radio 4's Archers: An Everyday Story of Countryfolk. All this got kicked off (as most of my brief obsessions do get kicked off by something) by the BBC1 programme around 11am when a man who looks like an auctioneer from Antiques Hunt showed an unusually minted couple round three homes plus a mystery house. (It is called Escape To The Country - I just looked it up.) The basic premise is watching someone else going househunting, which doesn't sound that inspiring, does it. And often it isn't, especially as it's usually in the £300,000/$600,000 pricerange (for which you can get a very average 5-bed house without great grounds or loads of grounds and a pokey thatched cottage actually no a thatched cottage with roses round the door might go for over £600,000 now... well whatever on this day we had a posher pair from London who wanted a spacious house in Gloucestershire (very posh county) for £800-£850,000 ie upto $1.7 million. O they won't get hardly anything for that! I scoffed how wrong I was. Man! These houses were absolutely beautiful. The best was a coaching house (ie the sort of building that in another life could be a country pub - but with hotel accommodation atop), the gardens were gorgeous with what looked like mature cypress trees... oh I forgot to tell about the house, it wasn't palace-sized but as ordinary houses go the ceilings were wonderfully high, 5 or 6 fullsized bedrooms, all wonderfully appointed, granite-topped kitchen. Wow. They even had a babbling brook in the garden... watching it started this strange longing inside me. I wonder if I will ever get there before I die...(!!)

Why does everyone like Sonique so much?!? When I thought I was the only one who did. Then what has happened to her? I know she has/or had a career as a club DJ, so maybe she's been spinning discs all this time. But I have to say a voice is such a greater power than an ability to spin discs... Hers has a primal quality. It's not all in the sound of the voice but in how she uses it too. I think that "Spell On You" is a fantastic performance...

That stupid cow Itchy has been sleeping off her latest adventure inside a tartan washing bag (where I presently hide their glass box). If anyone is wondering why I have FOUR hamsters yet mention ONE far more than any other three it's because Itchy is pretty much handtame though she has a proclivity to panic, which is in her breed I'm afraid. Any sudden noise and she startles out of her skin. Her "sisters" Bashful and Sphere are not tame at all really. They just love darting around being scared. If they were transmogrified into human form, Spherical especially would be waving her hands in the air and screaming (and then coming up to me for a discreet sniff when she thinks I'm not noticin'...)

Yes! I am a street drinker. Not! I feel incredibly defensive on this issue now. And that's all I'm saying as protesting too much was Lady McBeth's fault not mine haha!

Videos:
Madonna: Oh Father
Sonique: New World

Evil Policeman, Itchy Imprisoned (Again), Oliver Over... etc...

AN EVIL POLICEMAN THREATENED TO ARREST ME, pour my drinks down the drain and fine me £500 all for the "crime" of having visited an off-licence (liquor store) in an "alcohol control zone". He was incredibly rude to me and I remembered just what the police can be like when they're not being filmed in the presence of an "old bill" PR officer for one of those Cops and Robbers documentaries on television. (I've had that little to do with them of late...)

He never actually physically accosted me, merely yelled at me across the road on Mother Hubbard's street. When I pointed out that none of my cans were in fact even open, let alone being "imbibed" he climbed down a little and said, "Well let's keep it that way, eh?" and off I trundled.

The lady police officer in his company said not a word during this entire encounter. Perhaps she was too embarrassed. And the poor policeman. He was probably just trying to impress his girlfriend...

... Back at the house Mother Hubbard told me "You do look like a street drinker, I'm sorry to say it."

Really? I know I'm a bit scruffy but...?

Yes, really. She insisted. And then apologized for telling the truth, as us English are wont to do ...

***

I WAS FAR TOO UPSET TO POST ANY OF THIS YESTERDAY BUT THAT ITCHY ESCAPED yet again yesterday... (I should point out that she's not breaking out of her nest; she's jumping down from my arms during her daily out-of-the-cage ramble...) I told myself I really could not be bothered worrying too much about her being AWOL as I trust her to come back. Which she finally did over 24 hours later!

Last night I spotted her whizzing across my floor like a turbo-powered pom-pom. Far too fast for my 4am bleary consciousness (did you know BBC World Service radio have a newsreader called Bleary Gogan. Who on earth would name their newborn babe "Bleary"~?!?

Anyway about a half hour later I witnessed an evil wild sewer-mouse sneaking from the gap between some shelving and the wall... which thoroughly impressed on me just how tiny and tubby Itchy is compared to the common housemouse. And probably faster on her feet. It was a real rigmorole when I finally did capture her. Chasing her up and down the full length of the room four times. Throwing an Indian teeshirt over her in mid-ping. She jumped out of the teeshirt. I threw it down again, this time wrapping her up in tight custody. And only unwrapped her over the robotank. Which she took to pinging up and down and maniacally running her wheel most forcefully and causing thorough disturbance amongst the other two who poked out their pink noses and did the robo-kiss-kiss thing which is their greeting. A more severe greeting is pink nose to pink nose kiss-kiss and then one overpowers the other to a capsized furry bundle and forcefully grooms her tubby frame...

Well that's that! Itchy's exercise regime is under judicial review, like an escaping murderer's. I think she might have to be confined to rambling a large plastic box for variety. Then coming back to the glass box where she lives... poor swine!

OLIVER TWIST'S ALL DONE AND DUSTED! It really is quite a good book. And nowhere near as dull as Bleak House, I have to say! I heartily recommend it. And now I'm onto Anna Karenina. Which unfortunately being a £1.50 (brand new price!) budget classic has an enormous amount of information on each printed line which somehow wearies the eye.

But it is a great story fantastically told.

I've "read" it three or four times already... and somehow (never through boredom, only through personal upheavals of varying types) never managed to plough more than half through it. I shall let you know how I get on!

HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN is on BBC1 tonight (Brits only I'm afraid... well rather obviously unless you can miraculously pirate into BBC1 satellite feeds halfway across the world...) Excellent stuff!!

***

10:58 PM And her Majesty's latest docusoap instalment came to an end about an hour ago... Events included an Irish lady getting over-excited about personally meeting her maj at the Royal Garden Party (of thousands of guests at this annual event, only 100 are personally introduced to the Queen). Then she was due to be opening the new Arsenal football stadium, yet had to pull out at the last moment due to a bad back. I think they said it was only the fifth time this had ever happened. Poor Ma'am she must have been in agony to have done that, as usually duty comes far ahead of her personal comforts. The manager, who had been telling the camera how great it was to be that Ma'am was coming was so incredibly gutted he really looked like he was going to cry. But the Duke of Edinburgh (Ma'am's husband) saved the day. He is probably my second favourite royal after the Queen - a tie with Prince Charles. I was in a bad mood with Prince Charles the other week after finding out he (allegedly) reads NONE of his personal mail. Employing instead a team of professional letter-openers with posh accents to read and answer everything for him! I thought this was incredibly rude. But not as rude as most Hollywood stars, I suppose; many of whom would like to think they are royalty. Write to them and they'll never reply at all! I suppose this correspondence thing touched a nerve with me because when my brother and I were quite small and recouperating from scarlet fever, our Mum gave us midnight blue sugar paper upon which we painted some fantastic Bonfire Night November 5th fireworks in metallic poster paints. These we sent off to her Majesty at Buckingham Palace. Not long later I was astonished when my Mum told me we'd both got letters (and very posh letters indeed on crested paper) from Ma'am's lady-in-waiting telling us how delighted the Queen was with our "drawings" and how touched that we'd troubled to send them to her.

Sophie, Countess of Wessex (wife of Prince Edward, the Queen's youngest son) had a baby boy today, the Queen and Prince Philip's eighth grandchild!

Right I shall stop blithering on about the Queen now. Only suffice it to say remember everybody next week's instalment's on Sunday night, not Monday!

;->...

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Here's some wonderful Brazilian surfing pictures. Man! That emerald sea!!

Some striking modern photography from Sweden ...

See a German canoeing down an eight foot drop ....

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Some really entertaining Chinese supermarket snapshots!...

Mr Soap Suds Bumble's Weekend

WRITTEN ON SATURDAY EVENING - 15th December 2007

TEN DAYS TO GO! Till nasty old Xmas! I'm decamped to my floor, hammynesting between bed and mattress upended and shoved sideways... a deep valley...

I put "wild bird" (seed) out for the robbies earlier, so they've been all a-scamper and a-paking pouches and pinging to and from their seed packed teabox.

Spherical had crammed her own pouches so brimmingly full she really did look like a furry ball with stubby pink scampery legs and beady eyes (when I first got her I honestly did think she was pregnant). And unable to squeeze into said teabox, she made an attempt at climbing the wheel on the outside which of course is impossible unless in ultra-gremlin style they've managed to bung it up with plugs of furry nesting... tubbily somehow she slipped down and underneath the contraption until she was laid out on her back, pink legs in the air, pawing at the whirling wheel with all fours for a full four minutes as it spindled round and round like crazy. O, how I wished I'd had something to film her with!!

Dickens' Oliver Twist I've been ploughing through with a literary alacrity unknown since my school days. Presently I'm on p254 and Oliver's with Bill Sykes on a burglary that's going all wrong.

It is late evening and the poetry of John Dryden is bleating out on Radio 4. One reason no "Gledwood's Poetry Blog" is included among my spoutly list of bloggery that even includes that Japanese blog is that for all the tiny collection of works I have thus far penned and posted intermittently up here in days gone past, I have not written a single poem in over a decade!

Now I'm feeling quite ill at ease and disaplied or disconnected/discontented I'm not sure which and all quite wearied out. It is that time of year. And Oliver Twist (which is now at p302) is floundering a bit) and I'm depressed...

I am succeeding, however, in my personal antiliquor crusade! Just one cyder can today! (Saturday.) And four or five cups of tea (and no sugar: how worthy of me!) in compensation.

O, I could really do with a Chinese chicken curry egg fly lice! Or possibly beef with glean pepper black bean sauce egg fly lice! One time they got the lice order wrong and purveyed me boiled! Ugh! I was vulgarized beyond description. Nobody orders plain boiled rice unless they're also the type of idiot who orders prawn flavoured pancake rolls (yukk!!) or who actually enjoys that revolting boiled sweet flavoured sweet-&-sour sauce they give out with chicken and prawn balls....

Mother Hubbs once presumptuously poured half a jar of industrial Uncle Ben's or similar sweet-n-sour - thankfully into a corner of and not all over - a marvellous risotto she'd conjured the day before, served mostly up, and was going to waste in a covered pan... The sickly putrid tide had encroached on nearly a third of this wondrous dish by the time managed to take urgent remedial action and scoop it into a plastic wrapper which I hurriedly shoved into my bag while she was out of the room ...

Sadly I forgot all about this until the pong of sheer putrescence flatulated out at me on a crowded bus and I pulled out the by now furry and green risotto to freedom.

Man! The sheer horror on everybody's face somehow almost made it all worthwhile...

Here's a good quote from Oliver Twist p333. The pompous Mr Bumble, formerly parish "beadle" (which seems to mean "general busybody and nose-poker-inner") is now most feared governor and chief punisher at the workhouse, where this scene takes place:~~

Mr Bumble came to a room where some of the female paupers were usually employed in washing the parish linen; whence the sound of voices in conversation now proceeded.

"Hem!" said Mr Bumble, summoning up all his native dignity. "Hallo! Hallo there! What do you mean by this noise, you hussies!"

With these words, Mr Bumble opened the door and walked in with a very fierce and angry manner: which was at once exchanged for a most humiliated and cowering air, as his eyes unexpectedly rested on the form of his lady wife...

"I'll tell you what, Mr Bumble" returned his lady. "WE don't want any of your interference. You're a great deal too fond of poking your nose into things that don't concern you, making everybody in this house laugh, the moment your back is turned, and be making yourself look like a fool every hour of the day. Be off; come!"

Mr Bumble, seeing with excruciating feelings, the delight of the two old paupers, who were tittering together most rapturously, hesitated for an instant. Mrs Bumble, whose patience brooked no delay, caught up a bowl of soap-suds, motioning him towards the door, ordered him instantly to depart, on pain of receiving the contents upon his portly person...!

***

Haha! I wrote the above post last night when I still had over 150 pages to go. Well now I'm on circa page 512 and with only a page and a half to go until I've finished it! What an excellent read! I can't believe it took me until my 35th year to discover the genius of Charles Dickens!

Hope everyone's had a cheery weekend. All the best to yous all!!

Roll on tomorrow!!


Video of the Day:
Sonique: Feels So Good

Escape Tunnel Robo Pony

LAST NIGHT'S TWO ODD DREAMS:
#1: standard anxiety dream about my robbies - all 3 - escaping and a-scamper all over the shop! Desperate on hands and bended knees I stooped down to reclaim them. But to no avail. For the last I saw was their tubby bums vanishing down ancient gnawed-out Tom & Jerry style arch-shaped mouseholes.
#2 The early morning radio programme about the countryside was a-blaring and I was a-sliping 'tween sloom and slumber and Radio 4 documenatary and dreams in such iridescent technicolour I suddenly was watching television! It was all about wild the wild donkeys of Dartmoor - mini entertaining wild horses - ponies if you prefer - the tourists flock to them. Apparently they are farmed. There were 20,000 such roborovski-style horses 20 years ago when the French market for human-consumed horseflesh was at a peak... And in the 1900s when pitponies were needed for the nearby mines 1000s upon 1000s more...

In my dream I was down the rain-dripping tinmines with a thousand poor pet donkies tethered to railway carts in the ever-deepening Canary-killing dank and gloom.

Apparently the poor ponies, confined for months at a time miles into the mountains got so accustomed to 24-hour dark that when finally they were "retired" off and dumped surface-side, the outside world with all its distractions and the gently stirring fragrant heathers and gorse and most especially of course the sheer blinding force of sunlight drove them bucking and whinnying to insane distraction. Poor ponies.

I was still feeling so sorry for these little horses when I woke up.

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Dickens' Oliver Twist is going really well.

I've done 160 pages in a day and a half.

Now time is short and I cannot babble. I hope everyone's having a cheery weekend. Especially Mr Atkinson, newly free after nearly 4 years in a sweating pink underpants American jail!

Back Monday!

NO! STOP PRESS 7:28 PM SUNDAY NIGHT; I'M COMING BACK IN A MINUTE!!

Odd Dreams Dickens Robo Pings...

I HAD TWO PARTICULARLY BIZARRE DREAMS IN THE NIGHT... first one was of trying to escape somewhere, trying to travel through countryside when the railway was out of action. So I decided to get there by flowing down the river... which I did quite successfully swirling in cold water with the current... until I fell asleep (and literally did fall back asleep in my dream) only to wake up horribly claustrophobically enclosed deep under ground having been swept down a dank dark cave-tunnel. And could not get out until great fortitude dragged me shivering and freezing cold up against the current and back into sunlight (wonder what that symbolizes...? Hmmm!)

Dream number two ~ I'm sure a dream-interpreter would have a field-day with this particular one ~ I was in a large rambling house belonging to a friend, it was being cleared out and to this end they decided to throw a huge party, not caring whether the place got trashed now since no remaining possessions there... There was a vile atmosphere in the place, lots of sleazy horrible men. And lots and lots of girls. I particularly remember one who looked like her nose had been in an Apple Mac Pinnochio Elongation machine - it was so long and ridiculous. Actually all these girls were prostitutes and I'd managed to get "inveigled" (if that is the right word) in a brothel. Right to the very end I took no part in their "services" (and didn't want to either)... until, just before waking up, I discovered the only service they offered was a last-supper-style footwashing. (No I'm not bowdlerizing my own dream: that really was the service on offer. The straightforward washing of feet...) Eventually I let Miss Pinnochio Nose (who vaguely reminded me of a girl in my violin class in primary school) wash my feet and it was so good I had her do it three times. Then I woke up.

Wonder what on earth that could mean!

I AM READING CHARLES DICKENS' OLIVER TWIST. (His second book.) It is nowhere near as waffly as Bleak House (one of his last books, by which time he must have got a liking for the sound of his own literary voice and flattered himself that his audience did the same...!) It's far briefer and to the point.

But poor Oliver Twist! A ten year old boy and small for his age. (So many of Dickens' characters are little boys small for their age. I wonder why?... Does this make them more sympathetic to the hard-hearted "get up the chimney you horrible little sweep" audience of the day? Do you think..?) I was nearly in tears at some bits when everybody was being so cruel to him. I'm glad I didn't go for Anna Karenina now (though I should point out that, despite the title, AK is not really a girlie book. It has about four main characters, two of which are male and two female. It's about being upperclass in Tsarist Russia and having affairs and divorces. A very modern read!)

Tolstoy is a more sophisticated writer than Dickens. More naturalistic; less pantomime! There's little Dickens says that he doesn't verbally treble-underline in shocking pink to ensure we get the point ... I must confess I've never finished a single one of his works either!

What really put me off Dickens for years was his habit of caricaturing, quite hideously, nearly every character he portrays. Although this makes the stories a lot easier to grasp on first reading, it's not actually as "realistic" as it purports to be. For all his literary "greatness" I would say Dickens is actually a top writer of pop fiction of his time rather than the pretentious "literary" works, for example, for which the more fungoid and ponderous like George Eliot was famed ...

Reading such fiction has made my memoirs seem even more unattractive than they already were, and simply illuminated all the sparkly advantages I could gain from a fictional account of the junkie life... For one thing every other person apart from myself in my current MS is deliberately thrown into soft-focus and misted over. I have to do this bc they're all real people - and with a few exceptions all still alive! If I portrayed their faults in too fine a detail I'd wake up being garotted by my own affronted supporting cast! In a novel however - because the characters are not real the novelist has carte blanche to dig up their sordid motivations, personal secrets and inner life as much as he or she likes... I hate to shillyshally but the more of Oliver Twist's pickpocketing exploits I peruse the more inspired I am to tell my own modern-day tale of shoplifting junkies!

I will let you know how I get on.

If I do ever get on ...

I TOOK BABY ITCHY OUT FOR A RAMBLE LAST NIGHT. Problem #1 was I accidentally mistook Bashful for her and had chaos scrambling and skydiving out of the longest lavatory tube in panick!

Then Itchy finally was captured and grabbed in my hands. I don't know if she was in a bad mood or had just heard my say "you're so tiny and furry" one time too many or whether she got startled by something like my putting one foot down on an extra-crinkly and startlesome carrier bag (roborovskis startle really easily; that's just what they're like. They're never as calm as normal hamsters. They're also ten times more pingy and curious than normal hamsters so that's the compensation...) One particularly amusing time they even got terrified when I poked some fresh parsley into their tube when they were sleeping. O! The kerfuffle! Three balls of fur went shooting out the other end like bullets from a machine gun. You'd have thunk I'd poked tendrils from an evil hamster-eating space-alien in there. Not a sprig of fresh herbs!

... anyway silly old Itchy got startled and literally dived in a treble back somersault - like the high divers at the olympics. And splotted down on my pink and yellow psychedelic blanket, didn't waste a nanosecond and went straight into a turbo-ping for freedom. Thankfully I was onto her in a flash and caught the wildly heartbeating little swine and squeezed her bum at the end of her magic wand - which kind of makes her shoot up through it at 120 miles per hour, appearing at the other end just head showing and an astonished look on her furry face!

Right I have to ping myself now as I've things to do. Have an entertaining weekend everyone!!

PS Do have a look at today's vids. Esp. Engelbert. I can't work out whether it's original 1967 footage or a mixture of then and now or what but he looks like a German talk show host and it's really tacky. Utterly hilarious!! ;->...

Tunes of the Day:
Tina Turner: (Simply) The Best
Englebert Humperdinck: (Please) Release Me ...

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EVER HEARD OF THAT FAMOUS AMERICAN JAIL WHERE MEN LANGUISH IN 120f DESERT HEAT IN PINK UNDIES?
Well a British guy called Shaun Atkinson has just got deported back here from there and gave an interview all about it on BBC Radio 4's "drivetime" news prog, PM.
Apparently all three years he was in there his parents kept a rolling blog about it; here's the link:
http://jonsjailjournal.blogspot.com
Excellent stuff!
This is one I really wish I'd known sooner!
To get right back to post one from 2004 about the cockroach infestation clickonthis.

Christmas Card Morning

I WOKE UP AT FOUR A.M AND COULDN'T GET BACK TO SLEEP. I'd just been having weird dreams of flying (as you do) into my sleeping grandparents' bedroom in the dead of night. Then flying back into another bedroom in another house in another part of the country that was somehow adjoined. And finding the room suddenly extended to twice as big.

As well as feeling... well not "shaken" but slightly "confused" by these dreams I was bloody freezing cold. STILL there is no hot water, no heating in my house so I was reliant on keeping cooker rings on maximum all night - my only way of avoiding shivering to death, double-glazing or not.

When finally it DID get light - o! The joyous view! - It was just like someone had sprinkled flour over all the rooves and back gardens. And the white trees fading into white air beyond. Just like a Christmas card really. Though I wasn't in too much of a "seasonal" mood. Being so freezing cold make me feel "sick" (as in withdrawing) so I angrily rang my dealer who "promptly" showed up a mere two hours later!

I think I might have made myself ill with a slip of the hand while pouring paprika into last night's stew. Man! I felt all bloated and horrible and sticky-****y (bright red as well! Do you really want to hear all these details? Then I'll start up a new lavatorial blog. And if you believe that you'll believe anything.) Well I think that "upset" has died down at last. And I'm minded to go to McDonalds rather than risk more of my stomach-fermenting stew...

Ugh!

Here is the best of today's comedy newspaper stories. Yes! I actually dredged up the links!

If you want to see the Queen playing darts from The Sun, then click here.

Metro, London's free morning paper printed up a modern-day Glasgow version of the "nativity" with Mary and Joseph fagging away in tracksuits in a smashed-up bus shelter with their staffordshire bull terrier tied to poor Baby Jesus' pram... and the three wise men bringing stolen booze, cigs and a satellite box! Chav Yourself a Merry Christmas!

Have you seen Nasa's giant spider? According to The Sun "the eight-legged freak was caught on webcam apparently attacking the shuttle... TV viewers watched in horror as the giant beast nibbled the shuttle's nose-cone, then wrapped its body round the craft's powerful rocket boosters"...

Oh and last (and definitely least) snobby Prince Charles has been criticized for following upperclass tradition and sending out nonfestive-looking Xmas cards with just himself and Camilla (Dutchess of Cornwall, if you will) snazzily pictured in black and white (actually, the link shows them in full colour - which just goes to show how the cheapskate newspaper was desperate to save money on printing ink!). The snap is so unrepresentative that Charles looks more like his father the dashing (in his time) Duke of Edinburgh... When columnist Kelvin Mackenzie contacted Charles's press office to find out why he didn't picture snowy scenes and robbins: "a flunky for Prince Charles says, 'The Prince doesn't do robbins.'" ..!

Odd picture of the Day:
Mysterious Estonian Ground Apples By Night
Has anyone got a better interpretation ..??...

Video of the Day:
Gareth and the Kumars: Spirit in the Sky

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STOP PRESS!
The rumours are true! I've just seen the terribly "deformed" and "decrepit" old Arabic crippled lady who hobbles down the street legs akimbo on crutches wailing "pleease help me! pleease help me!" to horrified passers by who pop pound coins into her eagerly outstretched cup (these she pockets pretty expertly so the cup's always empty - a technique I also learnt in my (long over) begging days)... I just saw a suspiciously similar Arabic-looking lady in same coat with same giant men's sized slippers on WALKING TOTALLY NORMALLY and with her head up not half veiled and down as she does when "grafting" - I glared at her quite pointedly and she instantly affected a severe limp. Too late darling, I thought but didn't speak up (she's the "no-speekey Eeengleesh" type for sure anyhow)... How I laughed my head off as she cowered away, knowing she'd been caught out.
Bloody con artists!
Yes I was a beggar too. But I wasn't a LIAR on top!

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THIS is meant to be President Ahmedinajad of Iran's personal blog:
http://www.ahmadinejad.ir
do have a look and tell me if you think it's real...

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WHAT BOOK SHALL I READ during those interminable nonsnowy lonely (sob-sob!!) hours of Xmas?
1. Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina
2. Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist ...??

Actually, come to think about it; I've thrown open the subject to "Victorian English writers of note + Tolstoy (who was Russian)" and done a "pole" on it up top so do be ready to answer.... c'mon!!

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Hey! I just checked my World Map of Hits and found out I've had readers today on all six continents! (Whenever you click you get the last 100 hits, so if the map makes me out to be a liar it's because you're clicking maybe tomorrow when the dispersal might be different! The dark shadow, by the way, signifies where it is nighttime on earth...)

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This is my friend Audrey's blog-motto. I think it's pretty cool:

It is the passion flowing right on through your veins And it's the feeling that you're oh so glad you came, It is the moment you remember you're alive, It is the air you breathe, the element of fire, It is that flower that you took the time to smell, It is the power that you know you got as well, It is the fear inside that you can overcome, This is the orchestra, the rhythm and the drum.

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RE The books I'm going with Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist for now. Dickens can be awfully wordy and rather brimful with waffle, but I've turbo'd my way through chapters one and two already and Oliver's already left the workhouse and is in the home of a couple of funeral directors (I think they were...)

Like most people on this small isle I know the story of Oliver pretty well... especially the musical version that we did at primary school. Fagin's song:

Why should we break our backs
Stupidly paying tax?
Better get some untaxed income -
You've gotta pick a pocket or two!"

is a classic. I can still remember my old headmaster from primary school up on stage performing that one!

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My local shop has sold out of my (current) favourite biscuits (McVite's Ginger Nuts). How annoying! I had to go to the supermarket and get own-brand instead. Hopefully they've not skimped on the ginger. I love fiery biscuits.

(Not too fiery. Not literally aflame...)

Why am I harking on about biscuits so much? Because I'm back to my old "drink tea not alcohol" move.... I've even managed to cut out the toothrotting SUGAR from my tea, which is quite some achievement for me.

I'll let you know how I get on.

(Not so much with the biscuits, I mean with the cutting out booze!)

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Look at this (from Josie's blog) for some amazing Canadian forestry!

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HEY! DOES ANYONE REMEMBER THE EPISODE OF FRIENDS where Rachel or Phoebe keeps buying stuff from an American shop called "Pottery Barn" (pronounced Paddery Borrrn (!)~ sorry I had to get that "Americans have strange pronunciation" bit in even though I know they think we all speak like the Queen...)

Well anyway I just discovered POTTERY BARN - despite the bizarre name - is REAL!!!

Click above for their website!

Pre-Dumplings Posting

RIGHT THIS HAS TO BE PRETTY QUICK as I've a carrier bag full of stew ingredients all ready "for't pot" as they say up North. Beef cubes (so much more economical than stewing lamb I've finally got that fact through my thick skull: no sharp bones either! Though the robos used to like gnawing the cooked up sheep's vertebrae quite a lot. Last couple of times I made it I added tins of blackbeans as in Chinese beef with green pepper blackbean sauce egg fry rice - quite yummy. Only this time I've got intellectual butterbeans to see if they come out any better (canned so no 237-hour wait for the dry pulses to expand...)

What are you doing practically every day making stew? I hear you demand. Well what bloody else can you do with a slow stewing pot? Anyway I've enough 団子 mix (sorry I had an attack of the Japanese; that is dumplings mix) at home probably to capsize the Titanic if all said dumplings rolled out were placed on the decks one side...

By the way, click here for a very neat-and-perfect Japanese dumplings recipe!

Hmmm what a perfectly fascinating post this has been. Haha! Sorry but I have to go and try and wash up in ice-cold water. Ukk!!

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Video:
Jeanette Dimech: Soy Rebelde